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| China can be like this | ||
| China is usually an adventure but newcomers, beware. Sometimes crazier than usual things happen. Attend! I work in an excellent school - though the gentleman who "looks after" us really does not understand spoken English. At written English, he's not too bad but to accept his "Yes" in reply to any question is to court disaster. He's an old English teacher, would you believe, but no longer up to today's communicative approach. I asked in writing if the school would be closed this weekend for the students to make their monthly trip home. No reply. So I visited his office, asked him if I could anticipate that the school would be closed. "Yes," came his reply and so I asked him for my passport which he had had since my return after Spring Festival - he must rush with it off to the PSB, you see, within 24 hours of the foreigner's return to China. So I told him I needed it to make a plane booking for the last weekend of February, school closure weekend, to see a desperately ill friend in Hubei. I got the passport and got the ticket. And, because he had to do something else with Gong An and Education Bureau and God only knows who else, he needed the passport once again. Full of sweetness, I handed it over. Then two days ago, I went to get the passport back in preparation for my trip to Hubei this Friday afternoon at 4.20. "No, no. You can't have it. It's in Suzhou PSB. They'll post it back on 3 March." "But Mr Huang, I need it to travel this weekend". "No, no. It's in Suzhou. They will post it on 3rd March". "No, no, Mr Huang. I must have it this weekend or my discount tickets to and from Hubei are useless." "No, no. The PSB in Suzhou will post it back on 3rd March." "Mr Huang, I will go to the PSB myself on Thursday afternoon and get it." "No, No. You cannot do that. They will not give it to you. They will not give it to me." "But Mr Huang, I only want to borrow it for the weekend. They're doing nothing with it. It must be lying about in a drawer there." "No, No. I've done everything to get it back from them but they refuse. I've asked my PSB friends here to ask them to return it but they still refuse. You don't understand - THIS IS STATE BUSINESS AND IT CANNOT BE INTERFERED WITH." Now, as it happens, absolutely nothing has to be done to the passport. The only thing that has to happen is for the year 2005 to be entered into my Foreign Resident's Book instead of 2004. Why the passport needs to be impounded so that this can happen, a process, by the way,which the PSB in Suzhou say takes 10 working days, is beyond me. Dramatics all round. Face saver arrives. Mr Huang will take my Foreign Expert's Book to Nanjing to have the year 2005 written into it on Friday morning. He will then return to Suzhou to the PSB. They will then look at the 2005 in the FE Book and enter 2005 in the FR Book and then he will be given my passport - but at 4 p.m. and thus too late for my 4.20 plane from Shanghai Hong Qiao. "Don't worry," says Mr Huang. "You can go the following weekend. You can have a holiday." "What? And pay out the same money once again?" Much rushing around. China Southern kindly put me on a later plane despite my having a discounted fare. Sadly, I won't get to Wuhan until 10.10 p.m., too late to continue on to Jingzhou, 3 hours by bus away. So, I'm up for more taxi fares, hotel accommodation - I guess about 500 yuan. So, it's costing me another 500 yuan to take my trip, Mr Huang has had an extra trip to Nanjing, great rise in blood pressure all round all because changing these dates is "State business" which cannot be interered with and which will take 10 days in ordinary circumstances. So, newcomers and those thinking about coming to China, be warned. This sort of thing will happen to everyone at some time. It will drive you crazy and there's nothing that can be done either to anticipate the event or to alter the inexorability of the process. You must just put it down to Chinese experience. This was to be a simple weekend flight to see a sick friend. Little did I realize that I'm the one now almost in a terminal condition. Thomas Tompkins 26 Feb 2004 artybeee@hotmail.com Xupu China |